It is a happy coincidence that I have spent the past few months hankering for a rewatch of Blue Steel and it has now appeared on the MUBI streaming service. I couldn’t remember many details, but I remembered liking it. I hoped it would hold up as a solid thriller.
It does.
Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Megan Turner, a young woman who we see at the start of the movie finally achieving her dream of becoming a cop. She is barely on the streets for a few hours when she foils an armed robber in a store (a small turn from Tom Sizemore). One of the customers lying terrified on the floor is Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), a man impressed by Megan, and also impressed by the gun dropped by the robber. Taking the gun away for his own personal use, Eugene complicates the situation for Megan, who is subsequently investigated for shooting an “unarmed” man. And things get even more complicated when people turn up dead, shot with bullets that literally have the name of our heroine on them. What could make the situation even worse? Maybe Megan and Eugene becoming romantically involved with one another?
Co-written by director Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red, Blue Steel is a 1990 thriller that feels as if it belongs in a later part of the decade. It has everything you expect from this type of thing, including a supporting cast of characters containing one or two people you know aren’t going to make it to the end, but one or two elements that help it to stand out from the crowd.
The first USP here is Ron Silver’s villain, equal parts charming and completely psychopathic. Silver is the kind of actor I miss nowadays, we don’t have a modern equivalent, and he is superb here, especially once he drops any facade and reveals his true nature, at a surprisingly early stage in the proceedings.
The second USP here is the brilliant commentary on the fetishization of guns. From the title to the opening credits, from the motivation of the villain to the changing power dynamics that depend on who is or isn’t armed at any one time, Blue Steel isn’t just a typical thriller with gunfights here and there. It’s a film that uses the broken mind of one man to show just how strange and dangerous the typical American “gun-worship” mindset is.
Curtis is fine in the lead role, if a bit unconvincing, but her main reason for being onscreen is to look attractive while holding an attractively alluring weapon (in the eyes of the villain anyway). Elizabeth Peña is the best friend, which immediately puts her in danger, and Clancy Brown is a gruff detective who enlists the help of our lead, which immediately puts HIM in danger. Kevin Dunn is a standard superior officer, reminding our lead of the rules and her duty, and there’s an enjoyable little turn from Richard Jenkins, the sharp lawyer defending his “innocent” client, as well as welcome, albeit brief, performances from Louise Fletcher and Philip Bosco, playing the parents who view the career choice of their daughter in very different ways.
Although it feels a bit flat during the final scenes, and those thinking Bigelow would throw more action scenes into this will be disappointed, Blue Steel works as well as it does because it never loses focus. It’s about a dangerous man falling in love with a woman, but he falls in love with her only because he sees her attached to a gun. And it’s a gun that drives almost every decision in this film, by being present or being absent.
8/10
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